Fame :: Rogerebert.Com :: Reviews 17/11/09 4:50 PM

Fame :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews 17/11/09 4:50 PM

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A crew member on how "Fame" went Fame wrong (mail) » / / / September 23, 2009

by Roger Ebert times & tickets Why bother to remake "Fame" if you cast & credits Fandango don't have clue about why the 1980 Search movie movie was special? Why take a touching Denise Naturi Naughton showtimes and buy experience and make it into a shallow Jenny Kay Panabaker tickets. exercise? Why begin with a R-rated look Joy Anna Maria Perez de Tagle at plausible kids with real problems and Fran Rowan Megan Mullally about us tame it into a PG-rated after-school Lynn Kraft Bebe Neuwirth special? Why cast actors who are Alvin Dowd Charles S. Dutton sometimes too old and experienced to About the site » Alice Kherington Payne play seniors, let alone freshmen? Principal Simms Debbie Allen Site FAQs » The new "Fame" is a sad reflection of Victor Taveras Walter Perez Kevin Paul McGill Contact us » the new Hollywood, where material is sanitized and dumbed down for a Neil Baczynsky Paul Iacono Email the Movie hypothetical teen market that is way too Marco Asher Book Answer Man » Malik Collins Pennie http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090923/REVIEWS/909249997 Page 1 of 3 Fame :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews 17/11/09 4:50 PM

Answer Man » sophisticated for it. It plays like a dinner Malik Collins Pennie theater version of the original. That there Joel Cranston Kelsey Grammer are some genuinely talented actors in on sale now the film doesn't help, because they're MGM/UA presents a film directed given little to build on or work with. by Kevin Tancharoen. Screenplay by Allison Burnett, based on the Do we, at this point, need another 1980 film written by Christopher version of the creaky scene where a Gore. Running time: 90 minutes. boyfriend misunderstands the way his MPAA rating: PG for thematic girl smiles at another guy, and gets material including teen drinking, a mad? Do we require parents who want their daughter to be a classical pianist sexual situation and language. and don't understand the need in her Printer-friendly » soul to perform hip-hop? Above all, do E-mail this to a friend » Buy now » we need a big finale so elaborate and overproduced it looks like a musical number on the Oscars and could not possibly be staged in any high school?

As an admirer of Alan Parker's 1980 film I was interested to see what would be done with this one. I suspect its director, Kevin Tancharoen ("Britney Spears Live from Miami"), didn't understand the Parker. It was not an excuse for a musical. It was a film with great musical performances growing out of tangible dramatic situations. Buy now » The new screenplay by Allison Burnett is shallow and facile. No personal or family relationships are dealt with in other but clichés. Some of the student-teacher scenes are expected, but effective, because such adult actors as Charles S. Dutton, Bebe Neuwirth, Megan Mullally and Debbie Allen (from the original film and TV series) speak from conviction and not plot contrivance.

The film, like the original, is broken into segments: "Freshman Year," and so on. In 1980 we got a sense of time passing and characters changing. In the new film these years relentlessly follow the standard screenplay formula: Introduction, Development, Problems, Resolution, Happy Ending. As "Junior Year" started, I Buy now » looked at my watch to confirm how little time had passed. The film feels hurried. It is perhaps evidence of post-production cutting that the fourth-billed Kelsey Grammar, playing a teacher, is on screen so rarely (his first dialog is nice, however).

I got little sense of who these kids were. Some of them I liked a lot. They don't parallel the original characters or use their names, but I gather that Naturi Naughton, as Denise, is intended to function like Irene Cara, as Coco. Naughton is touching and talented, but the scenes involving her controlling father are written on autopilot. and is it plausible that such a gifted classical pianist would have so Buy now » little feeling for her art?

Kay Panabaker, as Jenny, makes a sort of Molly Ringwald impression, but her character isn't gifted enough to convince us she made it through auditions. Anna Maria Perez de Tagle, as Joy, looks so fetching we wish she had been given more substantial scenes. Collins Pennie, as Malik, has the thankless role of the kid angry about childhood memories; that he is 25 makes his adolescent angst less convincing.

The filmmakers have stacked the deck, with several experienced actors in their Buy now» 20s looking very little like 14-year-old freshman and dancing like Broadway veterans. Their inexperience is acted, not felt. The irony is that Dutton's character in the film provides advice the film should have taken to heart.

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